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The Harrisons – Dear Constable

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Heading up the hotly anticipated debut album No Fighting In The War Room, Dear Constable is the latest single from Sheffield scamps Harrisons. And like previous releases Wishing Well, Blue Note and Monday’s Arms, it’s another blue-collar belter; a vitriolic rant set to an infectious dance beat.

“Dear Constable is basically an open letter of complaint to society,” say the band. “It kind of sums up what we’re all about – it’s got a good solid groove and, unlike a lot of music today, it actually says something.”

On the B-side, another exciting proposition – a Harrisons cover of the Nick Cave classic Red Right Hand, famously one of the best songs ever written about masturbation. Here, Cave’s droll baritone is swapped for singer Adam ‘Jubby’ Taylor’s distinctive Yorkshire accent.

“We’d been wanting to do a cover for ages and weren’t sure which song to do,” say the band. “We’d been listening to Nick Cave a lot at that point and thought we’d be able to do Red Right Hand with a Harrisons feel to it. Also, we were trying to write a song of our own with a darker side to it, and thought that if we learned that song, it would put us in the mood for it.”

The song that they wrote as a result, Crystal Sweet, is there on the album along with 11 other mini-anthems. With No Fighting In The War Room, Harrisons have delivered an album that’s worthy of the weight of expectation heaped on them by fans and the press. The band – comprising Adam Taylor on vocals, guitarist Ben Stanton, drummer Mark White and bass guitarist Ashley Birch – formed two years ago in Hillsborough, Sheffield before the term ‘New Yorkshire’ had even been dreamed of.

Naming themselves after Harrison Road, a local street whose sign they eventually procured and used as a stage prop, they soon made a splash on the emerging local scene. Things moved quickly after that, with the band gigging around the country, busking in St Tropez for three months, picking up high profile fans (Steve Lamacq, Phill Jupitus), storming South By Southwest (“we just got bollocksed for five days and ran amock”) and recreating the football scene from Kes for the Blue Note video, roping in Phoenix Nights star Steve Edge as the PE teacher and winning the approval of Kes director Ken Loach in the process.

With the album in the can, the boys are now looking forward to concentrating on doing what they do best – playing thrilling, life-affirming gigs.